{"title":"The macroeconomic effects of excess savings","authors":"Bence Bardóczy, Jae Sim, Andreas Tischbirek","doi":"10.1016/j.jmoneco.2025.103847","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jmoneco.2025.103847","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We study how excess savings affect consumption and propagate through the macroeconomy, which permits us to evaluate the contribution of excess savings to post-pandemic inflation in the U.S. In partial equilibrium, the aggregate spending response depends on the initial distribution of excess savings and the cross-sectional heterogeneity in marginal propensities to consume. In general equilibrium, canonical RANK, TANK, and HANK models make markedly different predictions about the macroeconomic consequences of excess savings even if household wealth follows nearly identical paths. A quantitative HANK model matches the decumulation of the excess savings built up during the COVID-19 pandemic across the income distribution. The model attributes about a third of the trough-to-peak change in inflation to demand fueled by excess savings.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48407,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Monetary Economics","volume":"156 ","pages":"Article 103847"},"PeriodicalIF":4.1,"publicationDate":"2025-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145479064","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Lucas Arden , Sebastian Hauptmeier , Christophe Kamps
{"title":"Inflation-stabilizing monetary and fiscal policy rules at and away from the lower bound","authors":"Lucas Arden , Sebastian Hauptmeier , Christophe Kamps","doi":"10.1016/j.jmoneco.2025.103857","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jmoneco.2025.103857","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We examine how fiscal policy can support monetary policy when nominal interest rates face an occasionally binding lower bound constraint. Within the conventional framework of active monetary policy and passive fiscal policy, the optimized fiscal rule features a strong response to inflation deviations from the central bank’s target. The inflation-stabilizing fiscal rule significantly reduces the deflationary bias and welfare costs associated with the lower bound constraint while maintaining debt sustainability. Counterfactual analysis for the U.S. shows that implementing the optimized fiscal rule during the pre-pandemic low-inflation period would have provided systematic support to monetary policy, lifting inflation closer to target when rates were at the lower bound and enabling an earlier rate lift-off.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48407,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Monetary Economics","volume":"156 ","pages":"Article 103857"},"PeriodicalIF":4.1,"publicationDate":"2025-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145479067","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Stock market participation and macro-financial trends","authors":"Francesco Saverio Gaudio","doi":"10.1016/j.jmoneco.2025.103846","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jmoneco.2025.103846","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The U.S. stock market participation rate has risen substantially since the 1980s. This paper studies the macro-financial implications of such structural change in a production-based asset-pricing model with external habits, which make investors’ effective risk aversion time-varying and decreasing with consumption. In this setup, higher participation generates a fall in the risk-free rate and an increase in the equity premium, consistent with recent U.S. trends. These novel results stem from a decline in the <em>average</em> participant’s risk tolerance, due to the entry of lower-consumption households relative to incumbents. Micro-level evidence from the U.S. Consumer Expenditure Survey supports the main model mechanism.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48407,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Monetary Economics","volume":"156 ","pages":"Article 103846"},"PeriodicalIF":4.1,"publicationDate":"2025-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145479063","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Robot adoption and inflation dynamics","authors":"Henrique S. Basso , Omar Rachedi","doi":"10.1016/j.jmoneco.2025.103856","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jmoneco.2025.103856","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Leveraging variation in robot adoption across U.S. metropolitan areas, we document that automation reduces the sensitivity of inflation to unemployment. To rationalize this finding, we build a New Keynesian model with search frictions in the labor market where robot adoption flattens the Phillips curve. The key channel is the option value of automation: the threat of automating labor tasks alters effective workers’ bargaining power, muting the wage sensitivity to unemployment. We validate the relevance of this channel in the data by showing that robot adoption reduces the sensitivity of inflation to unemployment relatively more in highly unionized metropolitan areas.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48407,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Monetary Economics","volume":"156 ","pages":"Article 103856"},"PeriodicalIF":4.1,"publicationDate":"2025-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145479066","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Cautious expectations","authors":"Alexandre N. Kohlhas , Donald Robertson","doi":"10.1016/j.jmoneco.2025.103759","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jmoneco.2025.103759","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper develops a tractable theory of cautious expectations. We impose the constraint that agents have to estimate the optimal weight on information in an otherwise standard class of linear quadratic economies. Within this framework, we show that expectations optimally feature dampened responses to new and prior information. Our theory has several similarities to models of limited attention. However, our theory is crucially consistent with the broad-based predictability of forecast errors and biased, overreactive expectations that have otherwise called into question attention-based models. We illustrate the consequences of our framework in a standard consumption–savings problem, which shows that cautious expectations can help account for empirical evidence on the marginal propensity to consume and amplify precautionary savings.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48407,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Monetary Economics","volume":"155 ","pages":"Article 103759"},"PeriodicalIF":4.1,"publicationDate":"2025-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145333506","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Overconfidence in private information explains biases in professional forecasts","authors":"Klaus Adam , Pei Kuang , Shihan Xie","doi":"10.1016/j.jmoneco.2025.103839","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jmoneco.2025.103839","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We observe a rich set of public information signals available to participants in the Survey of Professional Forecasters (SPF) and decompose individual forecast revisions into those due to public information and a remainder due to residual information. We find that SPF forecasters overreact to residual information at almost all forecast horizons and for almost all forecast variables. In addition, forecasts are overly anchored to prior beliefs for all variables at all forecast horizons. We show analytically that overconfidence in private information qualitatively generates both of these features. It also implies that forecast errors correlate positively with past forecast revisions at the consensus level, but negatively at the individual level, as documented previously in the literature. Estimating Bayesian updating models on SPF data, we show that overconfidence in private information also replicates the observed patterns quantitatively. All estimated models display strong and statistically significant overconfidence in private information.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48407,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Monetary Economics","volume":"155 ","pages":"Article 103839"},"PeriodicalIF":4.1,"publicationDate":"2025-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145333507","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Coordinating business cycles","authors":"Edouard Schaal , Mathieu Taschereau-Dumouchel","doi":"10.1016/j.jmoneco.2025.103829","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jmoneco.2025.103829","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We develop a quantitative theory of business cycles with coordination failures. Because of demand complementarities and increasing returns, firms seek to coordinate production and multiple equilibria arise. We use a global game approach to discipline equilibrium selection and show that the unique dynamic equilibrium exhibits multiple steady states. Coordination on high production may fail after a large transitory shock, pushing the economy in a quasi-permanent recession. Our calibrated model rationalizes various features of the 2007–2009 recession and its recovery. Government spending, while generally harmful, can increase welfare when the economy is transitioning between steady states. Other policy instruments are preferable to fix miscoordination.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48407,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Monetary Economics","volume":"155 ","pages":"Article 103829"},"PeriodicalIF":4.1,"publicationDate":"2025-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145333508","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Dispersed information, nominal rigidities and monetary business cycles: A Hayekian perspective","authors":"Christian Hellwig , Venky Venkateswaran","doi":"10.1016/j.jmoneco.2025.103843","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jmoneco.2025.103843","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We study the propagation of nominal shocks in a dispersed information economy where firms learn from and respond to information generated by their activities in product and factor markets. We show that imperfect information on its own has <em>no</em> effect on equilibrium outcomes, when firms have the flexibility to adjust prices and output instantaneously to changes in their market conditions, an outcome that we term the “Hayekian benchmark”. With sticky prices, however, this irrelevance obtains only if there are no strategic complementarities in pricing and aggregate and idiosyncratic shocks are equally persistent. With complementarities and/or differences in persistence, the interaction of nominal and informational frictions slows down price adjustment, amplifying real effects from nominal shocks (relative to a full information model with only nominal frictions). In a calibrated model, the amplification is most pronounced over the medium to long term. In the short run, market generated information leads to substantial aggregate price adjustment, even though firms may be completely unaware of changes in aggregate conditions.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48407,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Monetary Economics","volume":"155 ","pages":"Article 103843"},"PeriodicalIF":4.1,"publicationDate":"2025-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145333504","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Behavioral sticky prices","authors":"Sergio Rebelo , Miguel Santana , Pedro Teles","doi":"10.1016/j.jmoneco.2025.103828","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jmoneco.2025.103828","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We develop a model in which households make decisions using a dual-process framework. System 1 relies on fast, intuitive heuristics but is prone to error, while System 2 demands cognitive effort but yields more accurate decisions. Monopolistic firms can influence which system households engage through pricing. This strategic influence creates a novel source of price inertia. The model accounts for the “rockets and feathers” phenomenon (prices rise quickly but fall slowly), explains why firms with unexpectedly high demand often avoid price changes, and why hazard functions are downward sloping. Our model implies that price stability is not optimal.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48407,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Monetary Economics","volume":"155 ","pages":"Article 103828"},"PeriodicalIF":4.1,"publicationDate":"2025-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145333505","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Revisiting the forecasts of others","authors":"Ryan Chahrour , Kyle Jurado","doi":"10.1016/j.jmoneco.2025.103844","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jmoneco.2025.103844","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In macroeconomic models with dispersed information, agents have an incentive to learn from endogenous variables, which themselves depend on the forecasts of others. This paper revisits the model of Townsend (1983) to characterize how this mechanism affects equilibrium dynamics. The first part of the paper simplifies, revises, and extends past results about situations when prices are fully revealing. The second part shows that full revelation does not occur in the original model and proves that the equilibrium state vector is infinite-dimensional. It also provides a new numerical solution procedure for such cases, which operates entirely in the frequency domain.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48407,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Monetary Economics","volume":"155 ","pages":"Article 103844"},"PeriodicalIF":4.1,"publicationDate":"2025-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145333509","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}